The Eastern Trans-Fly (or Oriomo Plateau) languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages spoken in the Oriomo Plateau to the west of the Fly River in New Guinea.

Classification

The languages constituted a branch of Stephen Wurm's 1970 Trans-Fly proposal, which he later incorporated into his 1975 expansion of the Trans–New Guinea family as part of a Trans-Fly – Bulaka River branch. They are retained as a family but removed from Trans–New Guinea in the classifications of Malcolm Ross and Timothy Usher. Wurm had determined that some of the languages he classified as Trans-Fly were not actually part of the Trans-New Guinea family but were instead heavily influenced by Trans-New Guinea languages. In 2005, Ross removed most of these languages, including Eastern Trans-Fly, from Wurm's Trans-New Guinea classification. Timothy Usher links the four languages, which he calls Oriomo Plateau, to the Pahoturi languages and the Tabo language in an expanded Eastern Trans-Fly family.

Languages

Oriomo (Eastern Trans-Fly) languages and respective demographic information listed by Evans (2018) are provided below. Geographical coordinates are also provided for each dialect (which are named after villages). ! Language !! Location !! Population !! Alternate names !! Dialects

Pronouns

The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto–Eastern Trans-Fly are, There is a possibility of a connection here to Trans–New Guinea. If the inclusive pronoun is historically a second-person form, then there would appear to be i-ablaut for the plural: *kaki, **mami, **tapatapi. This is similar to the ablaut reconstructed for TNG (*nani, ga~gi). Although the pronouns themselves are dissimilar, ablaut is not likely to be borrowed. On the other hand, there is some formal resemblance to Austronesian pronouns ((a)ku I, *(ka)mu you, *kita we inc., *(ka)mi we exc., *ia he/she/it; some archeological, cultural and linguistic evidence of Austronesian contact and settlement in the area exists (David et al., 2011; McNiven et al., 2011; McNiven et al., 2006; McNiven et al., 2004: 67-68; Mitchell 1995).

Vocabulary comparison

The following basic vocabulary words for Bine (Täti dialect), Bine (Sogal dialect), Gizra (Kupere dialect) and Wipi (Dorogori dialect) are from the Trans-New Guinea database. The equivalent words for Meriam Mir are also included. The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. iřeʔu, iřeku, ilkʰəp for “eye”) or not (e.g. dřeŋgo, ume, yɔŋg for “dog”). ! gloss !! Bine (Täti dialect) !! Bine (Sogal dialect) !! Gizra (Kupere dialect) !! Wipi (Dorogori dialect) !! Meriam Mir ! head ! hair ! ear ! eye ! nose ! tooth ! tongue ! leg ! louse ! dog ! pig ! bird ! egg ! blood ! bone ! skin ! breast ! tree ! man ! woman ! sun ! moon ! water ! fire ! stone ! name ! eat ! one ! two